Rebel, Rebel
by Monroe-Militia
Summary: Rachel comes home from a business trip and doesn't like Charlie's new look. Her new boyfriend is even worse. AU where Charlie and Connor are pierced, heavy make-up wearing rebels... But it's only a stage, right?
1. Chapter 1

Rachel Matheson had just gotten back from yet another business trip and was being driven home by her husband.

"You were gone for a lot longer this time," Ben pointed out for at least the third time so far this car ride.

"I know. But it's my job, Ben," Rachel defended herself in an irritated tone. "What do you expect me to do?"

"That's not what I'm saying," her husband responded, his eyes seeming a little too focused on the road ahead of them. "I just think that before we get home that it's important that I warn you that a lot has changed in the past few weeks… Things are pretty different now at home."

"I think that I can handle it, Ben," Rachel retorted in a moody tone as she stared out the passenger side window. She was tired from the trip and that combined with the instant reminders of how long she had left her family for this time had put her into a bad mood.

The pair spent the rest of the ride home in an uncomfortable silence. After a few minutes Ben turned the radio on just to try and fill the silence.

* * *

Rachel didn't make it more than three steps into her home before she dropped her bags to the floor in shock. She stared at her daughter in silence, mouth agape, for several long seconds before she finally remembered how to speak.

"What's with the costume, Charlie?" She finally managed to croak out.

"It's not a costume," Charlie responded as she momentarily stopped rummaging through her bag to glance up at her mother.

"So you're telling me that you just woke up one morning and all at once decided that you were going to dye your hair pitch black, put on clumps of make-up, and get facial piercings?" Rachel demanded.

It was true. Charlie now wore heavy, dark make-up paired with her dark dyed hair. Her whole wardrobe these days seemed to be primarily black and she had recently added a nose ring and lip stud to the look.

Today she was wearing leather pants, a black tank-top, and a choker necklace. It was like she had walked right out of a bad dream of Rachel's.

"No, it wasn't all at once," Charlie said in an irritated tone before she gave up on whatever she had been looking for and threw her bag over her shoulder. "… Maybe if you'd actually been here for once you would have known that."

With that she made her way to the door, shoving her mother with her shoulder harshly on her way by.

"Where are you going, Charlie?" Ben questioned. "Don't you at least want to welcome your mother home first?"

"I'm meeting Connor," Charlie responded, pausing momentarily in the doorway. "And not really… She's already made me late enough standing in the way. And I'd rather not waste my time with someone who just leaves when I have someone who actually stays waiting for me."

Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but by the time that words came out her daughter was already out the door.

"Who's Connor?"

Danny had been sitting on the couch watching the entire encounter and quickly spoke up with, "He's Charlie's boyfriend."

"Charlie has a boyfriend?" Rachel asked in surprise before she turned and pointed accusing eyes at her husband.

"I tried to warn you," Ben insisted. "But you were sure that you were prepared."

"What did you let our daughter do to herself?" Rachel demanded.

"It's not that bad, Rachel," Ben said in a futile attempt to calm his wife down.

"Have you seen her?" Rachel shouted.

Ben decided that now was not the time to make matters worse by telling his wife about Connor. Instead he figured that Rachel could use a little time to calm down before she finds out what Charlie's new boyfriend looks like.

* * *

"And there's no 'I missed you Charlie' or 'Hi, Charlie' or anything," Charlie continued her rant as she sat cross-legged on the floor of Connor's house. "No, it's just straight into judgy-lecture mode. But what did I expect? She's hardly ever home, but whenever she is she lives in some delusion where she's super mom or something."

"That's messed up," Connor agreed. He had spent the last ten minutes silently listening to Charlie as she spilled out the entire story.

Bass turned into the room and his expression immediately transformed into a grimace.

"Oh great, Charlie's here," he muttered sarcastically. "Are you two staying here and eating or what?"

Connor glanced over at Charlie for a split second before he decided that she'd already had to deal with her own disapproving parents, so she really didn't need to deal with his disapproving dad right then.

He turned and glared back over at his father. "We were just leaving."

Charlie didn't question the interaction. It was nothing out of the ordinary for Connor and his father. Instead she just silently rose to her feet and followed him out of the house.

* * *

A few minutes later, the pair stood outside the door to Miles' apartment waiting for him to let them in. Charlie had her own key, but she was a little hesitant to use it since the time that she had practically walked in on Miles and Nora.

When Miles came to the door he simply wordlessly smirked at the two teens before pushing the door out of the way to let them in.

He didn't need to ask what they were doing there. He knew that his place had become like a refuge to the couple, since both of their fathers less than approved of their relationship. Ben seemed to think that Connor was responsible for the change in Charlie and Bass was sure that Charlie was the main reason that his son walked around with dyed black hair, black make-up, and several piercings. Bass had hated it enough when his son had gotten the two hoops through his eyebrow along with his ears pierced. The tongue piercing was a whole new level.

"I actually am kind of hungry," Connor admitted as he flopped down onto Miles' couch feeling more comfortable than he usually did in his own home.

"Pizza?" Charlie questioned.

Connor nodded his head in approval before turning his head a little, "Miles?"

"Pizza's fine."

Charlie ordered the pizza and then returned to Miles' living room with a bottle of beer for each of them in hand. She set them down on the table as she sat down on the floor next to it before turning to face her boyfriend.

"Come here."

Connor let out an exaggerated groan as he rolled off of the couch and moved to sit beside her.

Charlie smiled a little to herself as she turned to rummage through her purse.

"What are you looking for?" Connor questioned.

"This," she responded victoriously as she pulled a bottle of black nail polish out of her bag. "I'm doing your nails."

She wanted to take her mind off of her mom being back and she figured this was as good of a way as any.

Connor didn't argue and instead just stuck his hand out over the table to give her better access to his chewed down nail beds.

Charlie was just finishing up painting his second hand when there was a loud knock at the door.

Miles left the room and returned a moment later with a pizza box in hand.

Charlie closed up the nail polish and put it back into her bag as Miles set the pizza down on the table. They usually just ate straight from the box since Miles didn't believe in having to wash dishes. The only types of plates found in Miles' kitchen were paper ones and even those were a rarity.

Connor moved his hand like he was going to go open the pizza box, but Charlie quickly reached out and grabbed onto his wrist.

"Hey, wet nails," she told him. "You can't use your hands."

"Then how exactly do you expect me to eat?" Connor questioned.

Charlie tossed the lid of the pizza box open and then grabbed a slice. She took a bite out of it before turning to her boyfriend and telling him, "Open your mouth."

He did as he was told and Charlie moved the pizza over so that he could take a bite too.

"Beer me," Connor told her.

"You have to finish this slice first," Charlie teased.

Connor opened his mouth comedically wide in response as Charlie moved to feed him, cramming half of the slice into his mouth at once.

A laugh found its way to her lips as he made a slight choking noise while biting down. Charlie took the rest of the piece back and finished it off as she grinned innocently over at him.

Miles finished off own slice of pizza as he watched the pair with an amused smirk before turning to head to the kitchen to grab himself a drink.

After much chewing, Connor eventually managed to swallow the rest of the pizza in his mouth.

"Jesus, Charlie. Just because you don't have a gag reflex doesn't mean that I don't," he told her accusingly.

She continued to look as innocent as she could manage as she told him in a gloating tone, "Sorry, my hand slipped."

"Yeah, sure it did," Connor responded sarcastically with a slight smirk of his own. "And I have Justin Bieber's name tattooed on my ass."

"Really? Can I see?" She asked in an eager voice, causing her boyfriend to roll his eyes. "Or better yet, you should show my mom. I'm sure she would flip out."

"Oh, so now the plan is to piss her off?" Connor questioned.

"She's going to be pissed off either way," Charlie pointed out with a shrug. "It's just more fun on my terms."

* * *

**A/N: Please read and review! This story is dedicated to Steph-Schell because there is no way that any of this would exist without her :)  
**


	2. Chapter 2

"Who was at the door?" Rachel asked as she walked into the living room to find her son eating a bowl of cereal.

"Connor," Danny responded between mouthfuls. "He's here to pick Charlie up, but she wasn't ready yet."

"So then where is he?" Rachel questioned with an edge to her tone.

* * *

"Just once you could try actually being ready when I get here," Connor commented with a smirk as he flopped down onto Charlie's bed. "…But at least you've still got yesterday's smudged makeup on. That's a nice time saver."

"Shut up," Charlie told him with a roll of her eyes as she moved to her closet in search of a shirt. "At least I wasn't still sleeping."

"This time," Connor added on in an amused tone as he leaned back on his elbows.

Charlie settled on a low cut t-shirt and was just pulling it over her head as her mother walked into the room.

"Don't you think that he could have waited somewhere else while you changed?" Rachel asked, struggling to try and keep her tone even remotely controlled.

"Calm down, Mom," Charlie said with an eye roll. "I'm putting clothes on, not taking them off... Besides, it's not like he hasn't seen me in a bra before."

Connor had to cover his mouth to try and hold back a laugh as he decided to sit back and watch the show.

Rachel stared at her daughter in disbelief for a few seconds as Charlie moved to the mirror to try and fix her makeup.

"What has gotten into you, Charlie?" She questioned, although as she looked over at her daughter's now openly smirking boyfriend she had a sneaking suspicion of what had caused the change in Charlie.

"Good morning, Charlie," Charlie said, doing her best impression of her mom in a good mood. "Oh, your boyfriend's here. Wow. It's nice to meet you, Connor..." She glared over at her mother. "Good talk, Mom."

With that she pushed past her open-mouthed mother, grabbing her bag on the way by, and turned her attention back to Connor.

"I'm ready now."

* * *

Rachel followed her daughter down the hallway as she asked, "Where are you going?"

"Dirty tattoo parlour, cheap strip club, rundown motel... The usual," Charlie answered sarcastically. "Might even drop by Planned Parenthood if we've got enough time."

To Rachel's horror, Connor and her son exchanged grins as the couple walked through the living room.

"See you around, Danny," Connor said on his way out with Charlie.

* * *

As soon as the door shut behind them, Rachel turned to shoot her youngest child a look of disbelief.

"What?" Danny asked.

"_That_'s Charlie's boyfriend?"

"Yeah," the youngest Matheson responded. "Why? What's wrong with him?"

Rachel just about fainted at that as she asked her son, "Have you seen him?"

"No, I'm actually secretly blind," Danny responded with a grin. "…Yes, I've seen him. But so what? I like him."

This really was Rachel's worst nightmare... It was bad enough that Charlie had dyed her hair and gotten piercings and a bad attitude, but it was even worse that she'd found herself a boyfriend with the same problem. And the cherry on top was the fact that her attitude seemed to be spreading to Danny, who somehow didn't seem to notice any problem with the changes in his sister.

It was hard enough trying to cope with Charlie like this, but there was no way that she was going to let Charlie and her boyfriend become bad influences on Danny and change him into whatever it was they thought that they had become.

* * *

"I think she likes you," Charlie said with a smirk as she and Connor reached his car.

"Yeah, about as much as my dad likes you," he told her with a grin. "Oh, he was a big fan of the nail polish by the way. Thought it looked very masculine."

Charlie let out a laugh. "I'm sure he was... Maybe next time I'll paint your nails pink."

"Maybe not," Connor responded with a slight laugh. "There's only so far I'll let you go, Charlie."

She gave him her saddest eyes, but he didn't budge.

"Sorry," he told her before pressing his lips to hers. "Maybe Danny will let you."

"He hasn't let me do his nails since he was eight," Charlie told her boyfriend.

"Well then I'd say that it's about time he gets a turn again," Connor responded with a smirk. "Or even better, you should try and convince Miles to let you do his."

"I think I'd have to get him pretty drunk first," she told him with a laugh.

"Shouldn't be too difficult."

* * *

"I heard you were back," Miles said when he answered his door to find the opposite Matheson woman than he had expected to.

"Have you seen my daughter lately? Or her boyfriend?" Rachel questioned as she stepped into Miles' apartment.

Miles barely managed to nod his head in response before his sister-in-law was speaking again.

"What is Charlie thinking? She is not the kind of girl that just goes out and gets a bunch of piercings."

"Well I hate to argue with you, Rachel, but the evidence kind of suggests that she is," Miles pointed out, seeming quite amused with himself.

Rachel turned into his kitchen and grabbed herself a beer out of the fridge.

"This Connor boy is a bad influence on her," she insisted.

"He's not a bad kid," Miles defended. "Neither of them is. Maybe they dress a little weird and act a little inappropriately, but there are worse things."

"Maybe there are worse things, but she's on the path towards them and she doesn't seem to care," Rachel argued.

"Charlie's fine, Rachel."

Rachel gritted her teeth together before taking a chug out of her drink.

She knew that there was no point in arguing with Miles. It was clear that he was on Charlie's side of things and wasn't at all concerned about her future. Rachel, on the other hand, was still concerned. She was just sick of arguing.

"Well I still don't like him."

* * *

**A/N: Please read and review! Also a huge thanks goes out to Sexy Meat Pies and Bellabear for reviewing the first chapter! :)  
**


	3. Chapter 3

Charlie barely got three steps into her house before her mother was on her case.

"Where have you been, Charlie?" Rachel questioned from where she sat on the couch.

"Out," Charlie responded, really not in the mood for another lecture from Super Mom. "Have you been sitting there all day waiting for me to come home to yell at?"

Unfortunately, lectures seemed to be the only things that Rachel was interested in around her daughter since coming home.

"No, I went out," Rachel responded. "Came back pretty late too, a few minutes ago actually, so imagine how surprised I was to find that you still weren't home."

"It's not that late," Charlie argued.

"It's after midnight, Charlie," her mother pointed out.

"Right, so now that you're back everything has to change to your new rules and me and Dad don't get any say?" Charlie questioned. "Good luck with that."

"Look. I know that you're mad already, but I don't want you hanging around that boy," Rachel insisted. "Clearly he's been a bad influence on you already and I certainly don't want your brother hanging around him."

Charlie let out a humourless laughter at that.

"That boy has a name. It's Connor by the way, although I'm sure you couldn't care less," she responded. "And you don't get to leave for almost a month and then come back and start telling me who I can and can't be around. Besides, Connor isn't a bad influence. Maybe you would have known that if you hadn't made up your mind about him three milliseconds after seeing him for the first time. And Danny isn't a little kid anymore. He doesn't need you babying him. Besides, it's not like we're buying Danny drugs and getting him to steal stuff. Why do you just assume that we're terrible influences on him?"

"I really don't like this new attitude of yours, Charlie," Rachel pointed out.

"I wish I could say the same, but you've still got the same better than everyone else attitude you've always had," Charlie retorted.

"You know what? It's late," Rachel commented.

"So I've heard."

"We should get to bed," Rachel continued. "We can talk about this tomorrow."

"Or never," Charlie muttered to herself as she watched her mother leave the room.

* * *

When Charlie entered her room, she had to smile when she found that Connor seemed to have fallen half-asleep while waiting for her.

"I was starting to think you forgot about me," he commented as she stripped off her pants and pulled on a pair of warm socks. "I practically fell asleep without you."

"Sorry," she told him guiltily as she crawled into bed. "I had to get another lecture. I know, surprising right? And as much as I just wanted to ignore her and come to bed, I couldn't because the whole point of you sneaking in through the window was so that she wouldn't see you and kick you out."

"I'll let you get away with abandoning me then," Connor said in a lightly teasing tone. "Since you weren't having any fun without me anyways."

"I've got to admit that the look on my mom's face if she found out you were here would be pretty priceless," Charlie pointed out with a grin. "But definitely not worth having her kick you out and check my room every twenty minutes over."

Connor grinned at that and she couldn't keep herself from pressing her lips against his.

"Are you still tired?" She asked him teasingly.

"I'm wide awake now," Connor told her before bringing his lips back to meet hers.

* * *

Connor woke up in the middle of the night and carefully moved Charlie's arm from his body so that he could slip out of the bed without waking her up.

Once he reached her bedroom door, he paused for a minute and listened to make sure that he didn't hear anybody in the hallway before opening the door and heading down the hallway.

He had just reached the bathroom door when he heard a voice come from behind him.

"You have got to be kidding me," Rachel insisted as she stared in disbelief at where Charlie's boyfriend was walking through the hallway in just his boxers.

Connor groaned.

"Of course," he muttered. "I should have known that you would be guarding the halls like a prison warden after all that Charlie's told me."

"Actually I was going to the kitchen in _my_ house, if that's alright with you," she snapped back at him. "But you're a real charmer, aren't you?"

"Look, if you're going to throw me out, can I at least use the bathroom first?" Connor complained. "That's kind of why I got up in the first place."

Rachel just responded by staring at him in utter disbelief.

"I'm going to take that as a sure," Connor informed her before turning into the washroom.

* * *

Charlie woke up the next morning and was disappointed to find that the other side of the bed was empty. She figured that Connor might have just gotten up to use the washroom, but when she noticed that his clothes were missing from her bedroom floor, she had a sneaking suspicion of what had happened.

When Charlie walked out of her room, Rachel was just on her way out to leave for work. Charlie greeted her with an icy glare.

"Come on, did you really think that I was going to let him stay the night?" Rachel questioned.

Charlie didn't respond. Instead, she just walked straight past her mother as if she hadn't heard a sound.

"Oh, so we're doing the silent treatment now?" Rachel asked in an unimpressed tone.

Charlie turned to face her then as she asked, "Don't you have to leave for work?"

"I can be late," Rachel responded. "Why can't you just tell me what's going on with you, Charlie?"

"Don't do that." Charlie insisted as she turned her back and headed over to the fridge.

"Don't do what?"

"Don't try to pretend that work can wait because you're worried about me," Charlie clarified. "We both know that you put work before your family… Besides, you aren't worried about me. You're worried about how I'll make _you_ look. You were never worried about me before I became some huge embarrassing disappointment to you."

With that, Charlie slammed the door of the fridge shut and pushed her way back out of the room.

* * *

When Bass came home from work, he found Charlie sitting on Connor's lap as the pair made out.

"I'm home," he commented. "Not that that's going to stop you… Try not to choke on each other's tongues, alright?"

Once Bass had headed out of the room, Charlie pulled her lips away from Connor's and began to laugh loudly.

"He might be an ass, but at least he's not kicking you out," Connor commented.

"My mom makes both of our dads look approving," Charlie agreed. "All I can do is hope that she gets pulled away for another business trip soon… And have a little fun torturing her in the meantime."

"Shouldn't be too hard considering she's already pissed off, even when we aren't trying," Connor pointed out.

Bass walked back into the room with a beer in hand then, so the subject quickly changed.

"You staying over tonight?" Connor asked.

"I could hardly stand being in the same room with my mom already," Charlie pointed out. "And now she's probably going to be coming into my room every three minutes to make sure that you're not there. So yeah, there's no chance that I'm going back home tonight."

Bass may have made his dislike for his son dating Charlie abundantly clear, but the one advantage to him was that he didn't try to stop Connor from sleeping at Charlie's or from letting Charlie stay over. They may have had to put up with a lot of complaining from Bass, but at least Charlie and Connor never had to worry about sneaking around at Connor's place.

* * *

**A/N: Please read and review! A huge thanks goes out to decadenceofmysoul and WritingisLife95 for reviewing last chapter! :)  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: There's a long flashback in the middle of this chapter, so I italicized the part that takes place in the past to make it more clear.**

* * *

"Don't you think that the voicemail threatening to imbed a tracking device under my skin was a bit much?" Charlie questioned as her mother walked through the front door. Rachel was going to let the comment slide until Charlie muttered out, "At least Bass doesn't try to control Connor's every movement."

Rachel paused halfway through the room and turned to stare at her daughter in shock as she questioned, "Bass? Why would _Bass_ try to control Connor?"

Charlie and Danny sat in a stunned silence for a few moments before Charlie let out a twisted laugh.

"Of course you wouldn't know. Why would you? You spend more time away than you do here," she commented before turning to look at her brother. "How many trips ago do you think Bass found out about Connor?"

"I think it was when she was on the second last one," Danny responded.

From what little information Rachel had gotten out of Ben, the changes in Charlie had started right around the same time.

Before Rachel got the chance to respond, her son began to second-guess himself.

"Maybe the one before that..." Danny continued, as he looked thoughtfully over at his sister. "No, I'm pretty sure only two… Because you two started dating around the time she left for the last one and he hadn't been here long before you two met."

Rachel shot her son an incredulous look.

Danny shrugged innocently, "What? You were gone when he moved in with Bass."

It wasn't like what he said hadn't been the truth, although that was a big part of why it bothered Rachel so much. She already felt bad enough about the time she spent on trips and this was only making things worse.

"So Connor's Bass's son?" Rachel questioned with a raised eyebrow. She needed to be sure of the answer as she focused back on her daughter, "You're dating a Monroe?"

Great. Now she was going to pre-judge Connor even more than she already had been.

"He doesn't like to be called a Monroe," Charlie countered. "That's not his name. It's Connor _Bennett_. He likes his Mom's last name better."

"Charlie, I don't-"

"You don't what?" Charlie interrupted. "Want me going near Connor because he's apparently some terrible, corrupting influence? Yeah, you already went through that one before you knew whose son he was. Besides, he isn't like Bass."

Rachel wasn't convinced though. She'd known Bass at that age and, although he hadn't worn the kind of costume that his son seemed to enjoy, he had been bad news back then too.

After staying up all the night before, worrying about her daughter, and catching Connor over the night before that, Rachel thought that she deserved the liberty of going through Charlie's room. It was clear that Charlie wasn't planning on listening to her and was going to continue to do whatever she wanted.

Rachel needed answers and Charlie needed consequences. So, without another word, Rachel turned and headed down the hallway.

* * *

A few minutes passed before Charlie heard noises coming from her room and realized what was going on.

"What the hell are you doing?" She demanded as she rushed into her room to try to supervise Rachel's antics.

She was already too late though and she could tell by the look on her mother's face that she had found something. Charlie wasn't sure what it was, but she knew that, whatever it was, it wasn't good.

"Look under your bed, Charlie." Rachel said in that calm and controlled tone that always meant that she had been pushed over the edge and was about to explode into a fit of anger.

And the really ironic part was that Charlie honestly didn't know what she had done. That was until she crouched down and realized what her mother was fuming over. A used condom.

In all fairness, it wasn't like the fact that she was sleeping with Connor hadn't become abundantly clear when Rachel had caught him outside of Charlie's room, half-naked, in the middle of the night. And it had only become more obvious when she hadn't come home the night before.

She was an adult who was sleeping with her boyfriend. She didn't see why it was such a big deal, but it was clear that Rachel was planning on blowing things out of proportion.

Still, Charlie just shrugged and commented, "At least we're being safe."

Rachel remained disconcertingly silent. She was going to need to have a serious talk with Bass and sooner rather than later.

Charlie was waiting for the screaming to start, but it didn't. Instead, Rachel just turned and stormed out of the room.

"Mom? Where are you going?" Charlie demanded, but Rachel didn't even falter before walking straight out of the front door.

* * *

"_What do you mean you're leaving? You just got back from the last trip," Charlie complained after being informed by her mother that she was going to have to leave on a last-minute business trip, one that was going to last even longer than the one before. "What? You can't stand to be around your family for more than a day and a half straight before you have to run away again?"_

"_It's my job, Charlie," Rachel pointed out. "What do you expect me to do?"_

"_I don't expect you to do anything," Charlie muttered out before turning to leave the room. "Come on, Danny. I'll drive you to school. We wouldn't want to make Mom late for work, right?"_

_As the two Matheson children walked out the front door, Ben commented, "They'll get over it."_

"_I hope so," Rachel said as she turned to look at him. "This definitely isn't the best goodbye I've gotten."_

"_They're just going to miss you," her husband insisted. "I'm sure things will be back to normal by the time that you get back."_

* * *

_Charlie walked back into the now empty Matheson home, wondering what she was going to do all day with her brother at school, when her reflection caught her eye. She stopped and glared over at it._

_There was no question that her appearance was all Rachel. She'd gotten numerous comments on how much she looked like a younger Rachel, and yet no one ever mentioned any of her looks that she got from Ben. But could she really blame them? She looked just like Rachel and in that moment she hated it more than ever._

_She didn't want to be like her mother. She didn't want to look like the parent that put work ahead of her family and neglected them. Why couldn't she just find one damn thing that she had in common with her father? Couldn't she at least have gotten his dark hair or something? The only similarity that she could find was the blue in her eyes that could just as easily have come from her mother._

_Charlie's first thought was to cut her hair short or chop it all off, but she liked her hair. She still needed something different though._

_Charlie ripped her gaze from the mirror and turned to grab her car keys before heading back out of the house. It wasn't until she'd actually started the car that she realized where she was going._

* * *

_A few hours had passed, but it still wasn't time to go pick Danny up yet. Charlie had managed to get a small triumph, but she was still angry and had a rare urge to drink. She knew that there was one place where she could get a drink no questions asked, to the home of the only person who had ever given her anything alcoholic._

* * *

_Charlie let herself into Miles' apartment and hesitated for a moment before she heard the unmistakable sound of Bass swearing at the TV. So then it was probably a safe assumption that she wasn't going to walk in on anyone half-naked. Good._

_She turned into the living room to find Miles and Bass sitting in front of a TV that was playing some football game. With them was a guy a little older than her who was sitting off to the side in a chair. When she first glanced his way he looked bored out of his mind, but he perked up a little when he spotted her._

_Miles noticed her at the same time and stared at her for half a second before commenting, "Your hair is different."_

"_I dyed it," she responded._

"_It's black," he added._

"_I had an impulse," Charlie explained as she cracked a small smile. She knew that Miles never made any real comments about changes in appearance, whether he liked the change or not, so his reaction was expected. The last time that she'd gotten any input on something like that had been on a Halloween costume when she was eight. "And now I need a drink."_

_She turned to head to the kitchen and Connor instantly rose to his feet and followed her, uninvited._

_Once the pair was out of the room, Miles turned to Bass and commented, "I was starting to wonder what he has in common with you, but following around any girl he sees is definitely all you."_

* * *

_Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Charlie had just taken a swig out of her beer and turned around to see the boy, who she could only assume was Bass's mystery son, standing a few feet away from her._

"_I like it," he told her._

"_What?" Charlie asked, genuinely confused._

"_Your black hair," he responded with an innocent shrug as a small smile tugged at his lips. "I like it."_

"_You don't know what my hair looked like before this," she pointed out, seeming amused._

"_I don't need to," he insisted. "I can tell you look good without knowing how you looked before."_

_Charlie looked down at the bottle in her hand, then back up at him with a satisfied smile on her lips. "You're Bass's kid, right?"_

"_That's what they tell me. Although I usually go by Connor."_

_Charlie looked over at him for a moment before her smile became mischievous. She set her drink down and then took a couple of steps forward to close the distance between them as she brought her lips to his._

_He was cute and seemed to be interested, plus she was in an especially impulsive mood today. So why not?_

* * *

_Miles had been heading to the kitchen, but paused and turned to look back at his friend with a smirk. He figured that getting another beer could wait since his kitchen was otherwise occupied at the moment, so he walked back over to sit on the couch again._

"_Well, I think they like each other," he commented in an amused tone._

"_What?" Bass questioned as he turned to look over in the direction of the kitchen before turning back to Miles. "With Charlie? I don't think so."_

_There was no doubt in his mind that innocent, little, goody-two-shoes Charlie Matheson was the type of girl who would giggle and awkwardly dance around flirting instead of ever letting anything actually happen. He was wrong._

"_Really? Because you can go look. They've got their tongues halfway down each other's throats in there."_

* * *

_Several minutes passed before Charlie finally pulled away as she told him, "I'm Charlie. Miles' niece."_

_With that, she took a step back and grabbed her drink again, before turning to head back out of the room._

* * *

_Charlie and Connor had returned to the living room as if nothing had ever happened. It wasn't until half an hour later, when Charlie was leaving, that either of them said a word to each other again. _

_As she rose to her feet, she turned to Connor and told him, "I've got to go pick my brother up. You want to come?" She'd only had the one drink, since she'd known that she still had to pick Danny up, but she was still feeling a certain amount of courage that had formed from doing things that she typically wouldn't._

"_You have no idea how much I want to leave," Connor responded as he got up to follow her. He'd had more than enough of listening to Miles and Bass 'watch' TV._

* * *

_As Danny got into the car, he commented, "I don't know which to be more surprised about; the fact that you dyed your hair black or that you brought a guy with you."_

_Connor turned to smirk over at her as she rolled her eyes at her brother._

"_Danny, meet Connor Monroe."_

"_Bennett." He corrected._

"_What?" She asked as she turned to look over at him in confusion._

"_My name's Connor Bennett," he explained. "Not Monroe."_

"_Okay, then. Danny, meet Connor Bennett."_

* * *

"_You dyed your hair," Ben pointed out in surprise as he walked into the house and his attention immediately zeroed onto the older of his two children._

"_That's what they tell me," she responded. She smirked a little to herself as she recycled Connor's retort, despite the fact that he wasn't there to hear it._

"_She also got a boyfriend," Danny commented without looking up from his homework._

"_He's not my boyfriend," Charlie argued, although the word 'yet' came to her mind just as much as it came to Danny's._

* * *

_A few days later, Charlie was bored out of her mind again and headed back over to Miles' place._

_Miles began to laugh as he watched her less than subtly crane her neck to look around the corner, trying to check if there was anyone else over._

"_Connor's not here, Charlie," he told her._

"_What makes you think I was looking for him?"_

"_I saw you two in the kitchen in the kitchen," Miles informed her. "For future reference, if you're interested in someone, you never leave without a phone number, whether you think you have people in common or not."_

_Charlie didn't get the chance to say anything before her uncle had picked up the phone._

"_What are you doing, Miles?" She questioned._

_He responded with a smug smirk instead of words as he began to dial._

_There was a painful pause before she heard Miles ask, "Is your kid there?"_

"_Miles. Don't." Charlie insisted as she shot him a warning glare, but it was already too late._

_Miles tossed the phone over at her and she barely managed to catch it before it could hit the ground._

"_Oops. My hand slipped," he apologized with a less than innocent shrug._

* * *

"_Connor!" Bass called out._

"_What?" Connor grumbled as he walked into the room._

"_Miles wants to talk to you," Bass told him as he held out the phone._

"_Why?" Connor questioned, glaring at the phone. He didn't understand why his dad's friend was calling him._

"_I don't know. Ask him yourself," Bass insisted._

_Connor reluctantly took the phone from his father and muttered out, "Hello?"_

* * *

_Miles leaned forward, resting his weight on the back of the couch, as he watched Charlie glare at him from across the room. He was just about to comment on how smooth the whole silent act was, when she finally spoke up._

"_What are you doing today, Bennett?"_

* * *

_Bass was surprised to see a rare smile form on his son's lips. It may have been a smug one, but it was a smile nonetheless._

"_Has anyone ever told you that you have a very feminine phone voice, Miles?" Connor asked, sounding thoroughly amused with himself._

"_Just answer the question."_

"_I don't know. You tell me," he responded. "Are you at Miles' place?"_

"_Yeah."_

"_Alright. I'll meet you there."_

* * *

_As Charlie hung up the phone with an undisguisable smile, Miles commented, "You owe me… You two had better name your first-born after me."_

"_Shut up."_

"_You're welcome."_

* * *

Bass opened the door and let out a loud groan.

"Well if it isn't my least favourite Matheson," he commented. "And that's saying something, considering how much your daughter's been getting on my nerves lately."

"Do you know what I found in Charlie's room?" Rachel questioned with a clear edge to her tone.

"Was it Connor?" Bass questioned, seeming nowhere near as upset as she was. In fact, he almost seemed amused with his response.

"Do you think this is funny, Bass?" Rachel demanded.

* * *

Connor was upstairs in his room when he heard the shouting start a few minutes later.

"Don't try and act like you're a real father, Bass!"

"At least I knew whose kid Connor's dating!"

"At least I knew I had a kid!"

"Yeah and I've heard your kid bitching! …You know, Rachel, I'm surprised that you didn't a surrogate mother to deal with your pregnancies for you so that they wouldn't interfere with your work!"

Connor rose to his feet. This was definitely too good to miss.

* * *

"Don't talk about my kids like that!"

"Why not? Because you speak so kindly of my son? Besides, Charlie's an even bigger mess than you used to be and it's rubbing off on Connor."

"The only reason that she's a mess is because your disaster of a son is a horrible influence on her," Rachel retorted. "Have you looked at him? How many piercings does he have Bass?"

Connor turned into the room then with a smug grin plastered on his face. He'd made it there in perfect time. "If you're going to count, then don't forget this one."

With that he stuck his tongue out much further than was necessary to show off his tongue stud before closing his mouth again and leaning back against the wall as he waited for the rest of the drama to unfold.

As Rachel recoiled from even the sight of him and his tongue piercing, a self-satisfied smirk formed on his lips. "What? Charlie seemed to like it last night."

Much to Connor's surprise, a smirk formed on his father's lips at that. He must really dislike Rachel too, since he let out a laugh instead of getting pissed at Connor for that remark.

Rachel was clearly even more pissed off at that, but she remained silent as she realized that anything she said was going to be ignored by Bass or used as ammunition.

She shot a glare over at Connor, who decided that she looked a little too annoyed with his presence for someone who had shown up at his place to complain about him. Someone needed to let her know that she was dismissed and he wanted to make a point of the fact that he had every right to be strolling through the room with his tongue stud hanging out of his mouth, so he decided to add a little extra insult to Rachel's injury by acting as though she weren't even there anymore.

"Is there anything to eat?" Connor questioned as he turned to look over at his father, effectively turning his back to Rachel and blocking her out of the conversation.

Rachel shook her head. This was getting her nowhere. If anything, it was making matters worse so she turned around and walked out of the door without another word.

Once she was gone, all amusement that had been present in Bass's features immediately dissipated and he just looked annoyed as he turned to look over at Connor.

"I'll make food if you take that damn eye-liner off for the rest of the night," he offered.

"Deal."

* * *

**A/N: Please read and review! I'm not sure if there's going to be more flashbacks or not. Chances are yes, but ones that are shorter. And, of course, a ginormous thanks goes out to Sexy Meat Pies and decadenceofmysoul for reviewing last chapter! :) **


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